SOURCE: "MacPherson's Ossian," in Queen's Quarterly, Vol. XLV, No. 3, Autumn, 1938, pp. 366-76.

[In the following essay, Walsh reviews the critical controversy over Ossian's authenticity, highlighting the findings of the Highland Society of Scotland as well as the internal stylistic evidence against Macpherson's claim.]

Macpherson's imposture is probably unique in the annals of literature. If he had looked forward and deliberately planned it, realizing the publicity it would receive, it is doubtful that he would ever have attempted it; but he was drawn into it in the first place by a tempting and unlooked-for opportunity, and once he was committed his stubborn pride would not allow him to withdraw. He was proud, romantic and gifted, but unfortunately devoid of moral sense.

He was born at Ruthven, Inverness, in the parish of Kingussie, in the year 1736. He studied at King's College, Aberdeen, and afterwards at the University of Edinburgh. In spare time he taught at the schoolhouse of his native place, and later became tutor to a young gentleman at Moffat. There he had the good fortune to meet John Home, the poet, and the literary adventure was launched. Home had heard vaguely of the old Gaelic lore in the Highlands and was eager to know more. Macpherson had already published in the Scots Magazine a poem entitled The Highlander, and Home was delighted to hear that he had other manuscript materials in his possession. Home asked him if he would translate some of his pieces, and finally after some hesitation he consented and made an English rendering of a ballad entitled The Death of Oscar.

That was the beginning. In 1760 there appeared anonymously Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic, with a short preface by Dr. Blair.

Published under the distinguished patronage of Dr. Blair and his friends, Dr. Ferguson and Principal Robertson, the poems excited considerable interest. Dr. Blair had announced in his preface that besides other remains of Celtic genius, there existed in Gaelic an epic poem, which could be recovered and translated if funds were provided; and on the strength of this appeal a subscription was raised which allowed Macpherson to make a tour of research through the wester Highlands and islands, accompanied by two Gaelic scholars known to be superior to himself in knowledge of the old language.

He returned in the autumn, is is said, with a considerable number of ancient poems, taken down from oral recitation, and carrying also various MSS., some loaned by Clanranald and others by people in the Hebrides. He announced to his patrons in Edinburgh the discovery of the epic already referred to, and spent the winter working on the so-called translation. It might be said here that the manuscripts loaned to him were never returned to the owners, and it is not known what became of them—the presumption being that they were destroyed to protect his "translation".

In 1762 the Bard of Badenoch, as he was called, published in London a large quarto volume containing Fingal, an epic in six parts, with several other shorter poems, and some of the "fragments" issued in 1760. In 1763 there followed Temora, a second and larger epic poem in eight books; and in 1765 a collected edition of The Works of Ossian. All these were described as having been "composed by Ossian, son of Fingal, and translated from the Gaelic by James Macpherson."

The books had an amazing sale, helped no doubt by the animadversions of English critics, led by the redoubtable Samuel Johnson, which roused the Highlanders to fury and confirmed their faith in the new Highland bard. If Macpherson had planned his imposture solely with a view to the financial reward, he could not have acted more shrewdly. If he had published his poems honestly as his own compositions, the chances are that they would have enjoyed the usual meagre sale of a scholar's work; but the controversy which raged back and forth between London and Edinburgh, assuming in time the proportions of an international imbroglio, increased enormously the sale of his books and spread eventually across the Channel, so that before the end of the century the bogus "Ossian" had been translated into almost every language in Europe. Unbiased foreigners accepted the work on its merits. We are told that Goethe wept over the Songs of Selma, declaring that a new Homer had arisen, and that Napoleon carried a French translation with him into exile. The Breton poet, de la Villemarqué, was another admirer, but he would naturally have a fellow-feeling, for he himself was guilty of a similar imposture in his book Barzaz Breiz, a compilation of alleged primitive Breton folk-tales and ballads, none of which were older than the sixteenth century.

In the meantime, while the profits from his books were still pouring in, Macpherson found it convenient to evade the storm of criticism and the importunities of his friends (who were urging him to produce the originals from which his translations were made) by the acceptance of an appointment as secretary to Governor Johnstone, with whom he departed for Florida, leaving his critics to jeer in triumph and his supporters to gnash their teeth in anger and disgust. The most ardent of his defenders were out of patience with him, and about this time David Hume was writing to Dr. Blair, urging him to make every possible effort to prove the authenticity of the poems and to refute Dr. Johnson's assertion that "he has found names and stories and phrases … passages in old songs, and with them has blended his own compositions" …

Blair was in the position of having already endorsed Macpherson's work in a long dissertation on Ossian, to which Hume refers in his first letter, dated 19th September, 1763:

"I live in a place," he writes, "where I have the pleasure of hearing justice done to your dissertation, but have never heard it mentioned in a company where some one person did not express his doubts with regard to the authenticity of the poems … and I often hear them totally rejected as a palpable and most impudent forgery. This opinion has indeed become very prevalent among men of letters in London, and I can foresee that in a few years the poems, if they continue to stand on their present footing, will be thrown aside and will fall into final oblivion.

The absurd pride and caprice of Macpherson himself, who scorns, as he pretends, to satisfy anybody that doubts his veracity, has tended to confirm this general skepticism; and I own for my part that though I have had particular reasons to believe these poems genuine, … yet I am not entirely without scruples on that head. You think that the internal proofs in favour of the poems are very convincing; so they are … but the preservation of such long and connected poems by oral tradition alone,… is so much out of the ordinary that it requires the strongest reasons to make us believe it. My purpose, therefore, is to apply to you in the name of all men of letters of this and all other countries, to establish this capital point, and to give us proofs that these poems are, I do not say so ancient as the age of Severus, but that they were not forged within these five years by James Macpherson."

Hume goes on to say that what is wanted is testimony, not argument—and the testimony should be of two kinds. If, as Macpherson pretends, there is an ancient manuscript of Fingal in the family of Clanranald, get that fact verified by persons of credit—persons acquainted with the Gaelic; let them compare the original and the translation, and let them testify to the fidelity of the latter. But the chief point, he says, will be to get positive testimony that such poems are vulgarly recited and have long been the entertainment of

the Highland people. "This testimony must be as particular as it is positive." …"If you can give to the public a sufficient number of such testimonials, you may prevail. But I venture to foretell that nothing less will command the attention of the public."

In a second letter, dated October of the same year, a couple of passages are worth noting:

"I am very glad," he says, "that you have undertaken the task I used the freedom to recommend to you … You must expect no assistance from Macpherson, who flew into a passion when I told him of the letter I wrote you. But you must not mind so strange and heteroclite a mortal, than whom I have scarce ever known a man more perverse and unamiable. He will probably depart for Florida with Governor Johnstone, and I would advise him to travel among the Chickasaws or Cherokees in order to tame and civilize him."

The Highland Society of Scotland instituted an investigation along the lines suggested by Hume to Blair. They sent out a questionnaire through the Highlands and Islands, among the people who seemed most likely to possess the information required. To the queries thus circulated they received many answers, most of which asserted that the persons questioned had never doubted the existence of poems such as Macpherson had translated, that they had heard many of them, and that listening to them was the favourite amusements of the Highlanders in their hours of leisure. The Rev. Mr. Smith, translator of many Gaelic poems, wrote that near himself in the parish of Klimnver lived a person named McPheal whom he has heard for weeks together, from five till ten o'clock at night, rehearse ancient poems—and many of them Ossian's …

Among the MSS. that came to the Committee was one which excited great interest because it was said to betray convincing evidence of being an imitation of Milton's Address to the Sun. The reader may make the comparison by turning to the last paragraph of Macpherson's Carthon, beginning:

O thou that rollest above, round as the shield
  of my fathers!

The report of the committee of the Highland Society announced that despite all their exertions they had not been able to obtain one poem the same in title and tenor with the poems published by him. The result was inconclusive and exasperating. If they could have had access to Macpherson's originals a definite verdict might have been given; but since the elusive bard persisted in withholding them, there were some who were inclined to agree with the gentleman who, comparing his work with a MS. found in Clanranald's family, exclaimed angrily: "Damn the scoundrel! it is he himself that speaks, and not Ossian."

It is easy to imagine the feelings of Dr. Blair, without whose help he would not have been able to publish his "Ossian". It is evident that the good doctor had in the first place not only an ardent admiration for Macpherson's work, but a sincere faith in its authenticity. In his "Critical Dissertation" he pays warm tribute to the ancient bard and his 18th century "translator". Space permits only an extract of a few paragraphs out of many pages:

It would be easy to point out instances of exquisite painting in the works of our author. Such, for instance, is the scenery with which Temora opens … the description of the young prince Cormac in the same book; and (particularly) the ruins of Balclutha in Cartho:

'I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls; and the voice of the people is heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out from the windows, the rank grass of the wall waved round his head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina; Silence is in the house of her fathers.'

Blair's dissertation was written a year or more before Hume's letters introduced grave doubts into his mind. He was at that time firmly convinced that the epics Fingal and Temora were the works of the ancient bard, translated by Macpherson, as the following lines testify:

Though unacquainted with the original language, there is no one but must judge the translation to deserve the highest praise on account of its beauty and elegance. Of its faithfulness and accuracy, I have been assured by persons skilled in the Gaelic tongue, who were from their youth acquainted with many of these poems of Ossian. To transfuse such spirited and fervid ideas from one language into another; to translate literally and yet with such a glow of poetry; to keep alive so much passion, and support so much dignity, is one of the most difficult works of genius, and proves the translator to have been animated with no small portion of Ossian's spirit.…

"Elegant, however, and masterly, as Mr. Macpherson's translation is, we must never forget… that we are putting the merit of the original to a severe test. For we are examining a poet stripped of his native dress; divested of the harmony of his own numbers … If then, destitute of this advantage, exhibited in a literal version, Ossian still has power to please; and not to please only, but often to command, to transport, to melt the heart; we may very safely infer that his productions are the offspring of a true and uncommon genius …

It is a notable fact that in Macpherson's epics, Ossian and Fingal are treated as native Scottish heroes, ignoring the historical fact that the oral literature so long preserved in the Highlands, of which Finn and Ossian were the central figures, came from Ireland with St. Columba and his disciples and with the first settlers of Dalriada. Back of that period there was no Gaelic civilization in Scotland. Finn came to be known in the Highlands as Fingal, because of the descriptive name given him at the outset: Fion-na-Gael: "Finn the Irishman"—as he is sometimes called even to this day, not only in the Highlands of Scotland but in the Highland settlements of Canada.

One of Macpherson's critics twits him on this head:

"Like a true Scotchman," he says, "in order to make his composition more acceptable to his countrymen, Mr. Macpherson changes the name of Fion-mac-Cumal into Fingal … a Scotch king over the ideal kingdom of Morven in the west of Scotland. It had been a better argument for the authenticity, if he had allowed him to be an Irishman, and made Morven an Irish kingdom,… but as he must needs make the hero of an epic poem of great character, it was too great an honour for any other country but Scotland."

The earliest document extant in Scotland is the Book of Deer, which goes back to about the 12th century. It contains principally portions of the Gospels in Latin, written in Irish script with illuminations of the well-known Irish type. There are marginal glosses, notes and memoranda, partly in Gaelic, partly in Latin. There are several MSS. in the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh, written, it is said, between the 15th and 17th centuries, but with one exception the language is Irish. The exception is the Book of the Dean of Lismore. The writing in this book is in the crabbed Roman hand of the period, and the orthography is phonetic, making it difficult to decipher. The contents are mostly in verse, and the major amount of space is given to the compositions of well-known Irish bards, but native bards are also represented. Among the contents, in the Scottish vernacular of the day, are 28 Ossianic ballads, forming the most important part of the collection. Of these, nine are attributed to Ossian, and the others to various Irish bards, and three or four to bards of Highland birth. All these materials were collected by Sir James Macgregor, dean of Lismore in Argyllshire (part of the ancient kingdom of Dalriada) and his brother Duncan, in the first quarter of the 16th century. It should be noted that there are no epic poems in any of the above-mentioned MSS. Three other Highland MSS. remain. The Book of Fernaig, also in phonetic script, was compiled between 1688 and 1693. The contents are mostly political and religious. There are 36 lines of Ossianic literature. The two Books of Clanranald deal chiefly with the history of the Macdonalds, and are written in the ordinary Irish of the period. It was said that the Red Book of Clanranald contained many of the originals of Macpherson's work, but a later investigation proved this statement to be false.

The following are the conclusions of the Highland Society of Edinburgh, as summarized briefly by Dr. W. F. Skene: (We give only part of Dr. Skene's summary)

That poems, either complete or in fragments, had been handed down from an unknown time by oral tradition…

That such poems had likewise been committed to writing, and were to be found to some extent in MSS.

That Macpherson had used many such poems in his work; and by piecing them together, and adding a connected narrative of his own, had woven them into longer poems—into the so-called epics.

No materials remain to show to what extent the poems published by Macpherson consist of ancient materials, and how much he himself may have added.

This was as far as anyone could go at that time. He had many followers who still believed in him. It is easy to understand the admiration of Dr. Blair and his friends for the bard's genius. Whether or not his compositions were translations or original poems, no one could deny that in a measure they were works of genius. The style, of course, is classical rather than archaic; they belong more to the time of Pope and Milton than to the age of Ossian. No one who is familiar with the tales of the Heroic Age in Ireland could mistake them for early Celtic. Read the "Boyhood of Fionn", or O'Grady's translation of the Tain bo Chualnge, and mark the difference. Then there is the fact that besides the invented names (Selma and Morven, for instance) he borrows from the Irish cycles without regard for chronology. Conlach is taken from the Ulster cycle, as is Cuchulain (with the spelling changed) and both are presented as contemporaries of Fingal. Moreover, as Malcolm Laing pointed out, in his arraignment of the Bard as the greatest literary impostor of modern times, the constant echoes of Homer, Milton and the Hebrew prophets, definitely stamp his "Ossian" as of modern origin.

Let us continue the biographical sketch. When Macpherson returned after an absence of two years in Florida he was enjoying a pension of £300 a year. He was again urged to publish his originals, but he evaded the obligation by saying that the expense of publication would be more than he could afford; but when some time later a donation of £1,000 came from a group of Highlanders in India, he agreed to prepare the MSS. as soon as he could find time.

He left shortly afterwards for London and, when heard of again, was immersed in English politics. He obtained a seat in parliament and became an active supporter of the Tory government of the day. His vigorous and aggressive character, and the trenchant political articles he wrote, increased his influence and resulted in an appointment as agent for the Nabob of Arcot which yielded him approximately £2,000 a year. He used his pen in other ways: in historical works and a translation of Homer's Iliad, for which he was well paid; but these books were mediocre in quality and are now virtually forgotten. The translation of Homer, in particular, rendered in the same style as his "Ossian", was received with ridicule. It seemed that without the glamorous background of the true Ossian, inspiration failed him.

But he was now a rich man. In 1788 he bought himself an estate and built a stately mansion in the Italian style. There he lived like a Highland gentleman, cultivating the esteem of the poor by generous gifts. He was "Fair James" the poet—an unusual poet, who wore furs, and decked himself out with gold seals and rings, and spent his money lavishly.

He died in 1796, after an illness of a few months. In his will he left a sum of £500 to defray the cost of a monument and gave instructions that his remains were to be interred in Westminster Abbey. It is somewhat surprising that his wishes were honoured by the government, and he was permitted to sleep under the same roof with his arch-enemy, Samuel Johnson. And only now, after his death, it was learned that he had not forgotten the promises he had made regarding the originals of the so-called translations. He consigned to his executor a bundle of manuscript in Gaelic, which he declared to be the long-sought "originals".

A wonderful man, James Macpherson! with an indomitable and persistent courage worthy of a better cause. He carried his hope of vindication with him to the shadow of the grave. He had laboured for years, as later investigation showed, translating into Gaelic his own "translations" from the Gaelic.

"On this point," says Magnus Maclean, "modern scholarship has made patient inquiry. The Gaelic is the translation, the English the original. The Gaelic is found to be exceedingly modern, defective, bristling with anglicisms, and wanting in both ancient inflection and those idiomatic turns in which the old tongue abounds … The Gaelic is in fact a paraphrase of the English. "And so," Maclean continues, "modern scholarship, while it has shown Doctor Johnson mistaken in his view regarding the antiquity of the Gaelic MSS., has proved him right from the outset in his main contention as to the authenticity of "Ossian". But what the Bard of Badenoch has lost on the score of veracity, … he has gained on the score of intellect. For it is now recognized beyond the region of controversy, that on the slender basis of names and stories and phrases in the old ballads, he had the genius to raise that beautiful structure of poetic excellence which forms an era in the history of British literature."

Maclean is a tolerant critic, as is likewise a greater man in the literary world: the late Matthew Arnold.

"Make the part of what is forged, modern, tawdry, spurious, as large as you please," says Arnold, "there will still be left a residue with the very soul of Celtic genius in it …"

However that may be, it would be fairly true to say that without Macpherson's work, and the hue and cry it created, the Scottish revival would not have taken place. We know that before his time there was no printed literature in the Highlands, except a Gaelic vocabulary and some translations of religious matter by Alexander Macdonald. Such men as Duncan Ban (who never learned to read and write) and his contemporary Rob Donn, strove fervently to preserve the old tradition of oral minstrelsy; but they were practically unknown save by those who had the Gaelic, and it was Macpherson's "Ossian" which presently set the heather burning throughout the land and brought about what is now called the Golden Age of Scottish Poetry.

Let me offer just one more example from the bogus Ossian. It is characteristic because it expresses the Bard's dominant emotion—his love for the old tales of his people:

As flies the inconstant Sun over Larmon's grassy hill, so pass the tales of old along my soul by night. When birds are removed to their place, when harps are hung in Selma's hall, then comes a voice to Ossian and awakes his soul! It is the voice of years that are gone—they roll before me with all their deeds! I seize the tales as they pass and pour them forth in song. Nor a troubled stream is the song of the king, it is like the rising of music from Lutha of the strings. Lutha of many strings, not silent are thy streamy rocks, when the white hands of Malvina move upon the harp! Light of the shadowy thoughts that fly across my soul, daughter of Toscar of helmets, wilt thou not hear the song? We call back, maid of Lutha, the years that have rolled away! …